Light Echoes of Ancient Supernovae in the Large Magellanic Cloud

In the SuperMACHO project, we have imaged the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) repeatedly and used an automated pipeline to subtract point-spread function matched template images from the recent epoch images. The resulting difference images are remarkably clean of the constant stellar background and are ideal for searching for variable objects. Using these difference images, we have mapped the extensive light echo complex around SN 1987A. The image in Figure 1 reveals echoes of SN 1987A further out, and fainter, than previously detected. In these images, white represents flux enhancements in the 2002 and 2004 images, and black in the 2001 image. Faint echo arcs can be seen as far out as 6.6 arcmin and 7.3 arcmin from the explosion site, or 0.9 and 1.1 kpc in front of SN 1987A.